It’s Not OK to Be Cheap. Or Stupid.

I go to Circle K a lot.

They have sandwiches.

It’s convenient, and I like the sandwiches.

What more could I ask for, right?

Well, sometimes they have promotions. Most convenience stores in Hong Kong do.

But here’s a Gweilo Moment for you: I find it to be standard operating procedure for the cashiers in convenience stores to not give me the little stickers or whatever other Hello Kitty/Pokemon/Dookie Pet stuff that they’re shilling.

They scan the little tag for the promotion, they just don’t give it to me.

Maybe they take them home, who knows?

I don’t blame them, really, since 99% of the time I could care less and actually am glad to be left out.

But sometimes, they make me do it. The Circle K I go to is right near my ‘office’ in Fo Tan. I see those people a lot. So maybe they think I’m okay.

They just don’t know me.

Recently, they’ve been having some kind of promotion involving Toy Story 3. They have a little keypad on the counter, and if you spend $20 or more (I guess), you get to hit a number and maybe win something.

Well, me being me, the first time they told me to do it, I went with my “@sshole reflex” and chose the number 4. Because it sounds like death in Chinese and I’m crass like that.

Bells and whistles. I won.

A plastic plate with the character of my choice printed on it.

I randomly picked one and went on with my day.

As many of you know, I was really ill recently with bronchitis. My world got real small; I’d get up, go eat breakfast, buy a sandwich for lunch and go to my office. Around dinner time I’d go buy another sandwich.

So I was hitting Circle K at least twice a day.

I kept hitting 4.

And I kept winning plates.

Not every time, mind you. But it was still frequent enough that the cashiers started to look at me funny.

I mean more funny than they usually look at me.

They really looked at me funny when I won plates twice in a day.

Two different times.

Pretty soon I realized that my godchildren might like these plates, so I started to choose them with an eye towards completing the set.

I also realized that my ‘luck’ was no accident.

I started to think that maybe the odds had been stacked in my favor.

Every time I asked a Chinese person what was the LAST number they would choose between 1 and 9, they said 4.

I have no problem imagining that whoever was in charge of this made sure to skew the distribution into a place s/he knew a lot of (most?) Chinese people were too superstitious to go. Thereby reducing the number of prizes that would be given out, thereby maybe saving Circle K money.

You cheap @ssholes.

That’s the kind of thing that bothers me. Not so much that they did it; you have to expect such behavīor in business, because it is the behavīor of business.

I just resent that it’s such a cheap, shoddy ploy.

Have some imagination. Show a little effort.

You cheapjack swine.

But it worked in my favor; I got all 8 plates (in less than a week) and gave them to Sidney and Angie, who seemed pleased.

They also concurred that the results were likely skewed.

Welcome to Hong Kong.